Forsaken from on High, We Pursue Justice for Masafer Yatta
Realpolitik is cruel, now and always, but we nonetheless have a path forward for continuing the struggle
On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, I picked up the Book of Job, the story of the righteous man whom God torments in a test of his faith. After killing Job’s family and leaving him destitute, God reveals himself in order to answer Job’s charge that God’s punishment was unjust since Job was without sin. God neither disputes Job’s blamelessness, nor does God explicitly deny the iniquity that He visited upon Job. Instead, God tacitly admits that He, the Almighty, wronged the innocent Job.
Readers of this fable have interpreted it many ways, but the reading that I find most cogent is this: Job’s tragic mistake was failing to recognize that justice is not a part of God’s plan. There is no cosmic justice. God created the heavens and the earth in all their magnificence, but He allowed for bad things to happen to good people while the wicked go unpunished. As it says in another one of the canonical wisdom books, Ecclesiastes (Qohelet), “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.” Ours is not a just world. This life is cruel and chaotic. Therefore, we can understand the commandment in Deuteronomy, “Justice, justice, you shall pursue”—so often quoted by Jewish justice-seekers—as meaning that we human beings must pursue justice because we cannot expect it to be delivered it to us from on high. If we want to see justice in this world, that’s on us.
At this moment, Israeli armed forces are in the process of forcibly displacing over 1000 Palestinians from Masafer Yatta, a remote, arid region of the occupied West Bank where indigenous Palestinian communities have resided, in caves and other humble habitations, for centuries, and which successive Israeli governments have declared to be a live-fire training area for the military.
Locally and globally, people are resisting. There on the ground, Palestinian civil society leaders are organizing demonstrations, rallying Palestinians from the region alongside their Israeli and international allies. Despite crackdowns by the Israeli military and police — which disperse the protests with curses, tear gas, and beatings, and then return to the villages at night to harass the residents — local activists, like my friends Basil Adraa, Ali Awad, and Sami Huraini (to name a few), continue to push back against the state onslaught. However, any honest observer must note that the Israeli policy of mass expulsion, actualized by brute military force, is on the verge of overwhelming their grassroots nonviolent resistance. On-the-ground activists and their supports have therefore been turning to international allies for help.
Unfortunately, on the international stage, the outlook is similarly frustrating. Several months ago, ahead of President Biden’s trip to Israel, over 80 members of Congress, in the House and in the Senate, wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken urging the administration to “immediately engage” the Israeli government to “prevent these evictions and seek a solution that will keep people in their homes…” In their letter, the Senators and Representatives warned that “this relocation of Palestinian families from homes they have lived on for generations could spark violence, is in direct violation of international humanitarian law, and could further undermine efforts to reach a two-state solution.” Unfortunately, this rare bicameral letter with a relatively high level of support (at least within the Democratic caucus) has not elicited any public response from Biden or Blinken.
The race is not to the swift. Neither bread for the wise, nor riches to the people of understanding.
If we take a step back, it isn’t difficult to discern, from the steely-eyed perspective of realpolitik, why the Biden administration would be disinclined to press Israel on the issue of Masafer Yatta right now. The administration has been struggling to return to the Iran nuclear deal (aka, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), which Trump blew up during his term in office and then replaced with a cruel regime of sanctions on the Iranian people. While many Israeli military and intelligence officials have tended to support the JCPOA, the Israeli political leadership opposes a return to the deal. Hence the Biden administration, acting pragmatically, does not want to add extra strain to the US-Israel relationship right now—at least until a new or updated nuclear deal is finalized.
For people of conscience thinking of taking action in solidarity with Masafer Yatta in this moment, recent history offers us an instructive precedent for this current predicament—and a glimmer of hope. Back in 2015, Israel was preparing to level the Palestinian village of Susiya, which is also located in Masafer Yatta, but not in the so-called firing zone, the area under threat now. Led by the local residents, international advocates mobilized an impressive solidarity campaign, urging the Obama administration to intervene on behalf of the hamlet. But the Obama administration did not do anything publicly until it had finished negotiating the JCPOA. Iran, China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States finalized the JCPOA on July 14, 2015. Two days later, then-State Department spokesman John Kirby publicly stated that Susiya’s demolition “would set a damaging standard for displacement and land confiscation, particularly given settlement-related activity in the area.” He added: “We urge Israeli authorities to work with the residents of the village to finalize a plan” that addresses their humanitarian needs. The immediate threat subsided.
To be sure, this statement from the Obama administration did not end Susiya’s struggle. Far from it. I myself spent several nights in the village back in 2018 with other international activists anxiously watching for bulldozers when the residents called on us out of a fear that another wave of demolitions was imminent. And indeed, to this day, settlers and military frequently invade the village and its agricultural lands. I saw several of these incursions with my own eyes earlier this year.
So, while the Biden administration’s statement of opposition to the forced removal of Palestinians from Masafer Yatta will not be the end of the road, it can remove the sword hanging over the region’s neck.
So what is there to do while we wait for the new JCPOA to finally succeed or fail?
Those with the ear of the Biden administration should prepare for the moment when the negotiations definitively come to fruition or fall apart. At that moment, the possibility for renewed high-level pressure on the Israeli government will open up once again. Seize that moment.
Grassroots activists and movement leaders can prepare for this eventuality as well. They can continue to popularize the struggle of Masafer Yatta and build broad-based public opposition to the planned forced removal. They can, and should, push their demands for how US policy, beyond official statements, can advance justice and equality in the Land.
The case of Masafer Yatta illustrates several important points about how successive Israeli governments have dealt with Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank in general: through attacks, night raids, arrests, and other means, Israeli settlers and the military make life intolerable for Palestinians. The goal is to coerce them into migrating to one of the nearby cities, which are administered by the Palestinian Authority. This process frees up valuable arable land, which religious-nationalist settlers covet as their God-given birthright. Exposing this larger dynamic through the example of Masafer Yatta serves the bigger battle against the takeover of private Palestinian land.
Furthermore, Masafer Yatta has the potential to become a rallying cry for a broad swath of the American public, including certain Jewish-American organizations — which are often extremely reticent about criticizing Israeli government policy. Unlike in other places in Israel/Palestine, there are no hostile Palestinian militant groups in Masafer Yatta. In, say, the Gaza Strip, or the city of Jenin, the Israeli government can point to the militancy of Hamas or Islamic Jihad as justification for its actions. But one cannot identify any discernible armed Palestinian threat in Masafer Yatta. They cannot—and, to my knowledge, have not even tried—to justify the displacement of these 1000 Palestinian residents on security grounds. These details may have been decisive for certain Jewish American organizations, like the Union for Reform Judaism, feeling free to take a stand here for Palestinian rights. What other American civil society groups, local or national, religious or secular, could be brought on board with information?
Despite the need to reckon with the naked realities of US realpolitik, it would be tragic to presume, like Job, that the powers that be are planning for justice. Yet, it would be worst still to lay down in a heap of ashes and simply succumb to the iniquity. Justice is ours to pursue ceaselessly and with clear eyes.